Bucking the trend, this top SF restaurant just dropped its prices

At a time when food costs are on the rise and seemingly every restaurant is increasing prices, one popular San Francisco restaurant is trying something different. 

Last week, the owners of NoPa’s Che Fico Alimentari, sister restaurant to neighboring James Beard Award Outstanding Chef semifinalist Che Fico, sent an email to patrons letting them know that the restaurant is bucking the trend — and slashing prices.

“We love our community, and we believe that Che Fico Alimentari should be an accessible neighborhood restaurant, so we are lowering our prices and simplifying our menu,” the message said.

The email, sent on Sept. 8, explained that the Italian restaurant’s new menu will focus on pizzas and pastas “still executed with love, care, quality ingredients and classic techniques, but with a few tweaks that allow us to lower prices for you.”

In an interview with SFGATE, co-owner Matt Brewer explained that those tweaks include everything from cutting labor and prep work — extruded pastas instead of hand-rolled, for instance — to simply accepting smaller margins. Overall, prices at the NoPa restaurant have been reduced by 15% to 20%. And Brewer says he is not worried about his bottom line.

“If we’re better priced, we can hopefully increase covers and have overall better revenue,” he said. “We always viewed Alimentari as this great neighborhood trattoria where you could get a bowl of cacio e pepe and a glass of wine once or twice a week for an affordable price.”

The owners of the intimate trattoria revised their menu by first significantly reducing the number of secondi offerings — think pricey cuts of fish or beef — down to two: an eggplant parmigiana made with Double 8 Dairy mozzarella ($24) and a Llano Seco suckling pig porchetta that feeds two for $44.

“That porchetta is low-waste, high yield,” he said. 

They doubled the number of pastas and pizzas, which have been the menu’s most popular items since the downstairs Alimentari opened its doors on Divisadero Street in 2019. Pizzas, spun from the same dough as before and made in the same deck oven, went from three to six offerings and now run $24 to $28, including a quattro formaggi pie with imported cheese from Southern Italy that’s $24.

There are now a whopping eight pastas on the menu, including a generous bowl of mezze maniche cacio e pepe with pecorino romano ($20); spaghetti Napoletana with veal and pork ragu ($24); and agnolotti dal plin with the restaurant’s famed suckling pig, mortadella and Parmigiano-Reggiano ($24). Lasagna with pork sausage and Double 8 Dairy ricotta, at $26, is the most expensive.

Brewer said the restaurant is not lowering its standards. It is using the same local and imported ingredients, and working with the same farmers and purveyors, like Kashiwase Farms, Marin Roots and Allstar Organics. The 10% dine-in charge, instituted in 2021 to help pay a living wage and provide benefits to employees, remains.

For those looking to imbibe, Che Fico Alimentari’s price reductions carry over to the wine list as well. Glasses of Italian wine start at $14; carafes, $35. 

Che Fico Alimentari, 834 Divisadero St., San Francisco. Open daily, 5 to 9:30 p.m